Friday turned out to be a rather stressful day, and it had nothing to do with the flight or travel to the airport or passport control. Instead it had to do with my UK visa, or lack thereof. Last week I had gone to apply for my Indefinite leave to remain visa, which I was expecting to get back on the day. The application was processed on the day, but the visa was going to take 5-7 working days to arrive, which basically coincided with the same day I was to leave for Spain. Great timing! After arranging with the courier company to deliver it to home on Friday, they arrived just before 13h00, and I had planned to leave for Gatwick not long after that. So that was a relief.

After some last minute packing (up until then I wasn't even certain I'd be flying) I rushed off to Gatwick and towards Alicante, south of Valencia. Flights into Valencia were horrendous, so we decided on a slightly detoured route. Si had flown in on the Thursday, so was already there. Once in Alicante, I took a quick bus into town, found the hostel, dropped my bag and grabbed a beer in the communal area downstairs. Later that night the hostel had organised a pub crawl and there were probably about 8 of us who had signed up for it, so off we went around Alicante hopping from pub to pub. It was very much your typical hostel organised pub crawl with free entry here and a few free drinks there, nothing crazy but still a good night out.

Saturday morning we were up fairly early (for holiday) to get into town and catch the bus up to Valencia, where the biggest celebration of Las Fallas takes place. It took a few hours to get there from Alicante, but since all trains were booked out, it was the next best option for us. We got into Valencia around lunch time, then caught the metro and headed over to our hotel, Kris Consul del Mar which seemed really nice and fairly central, basically just a base for the next few days of Las Fallas. The Falles is a traditional celebration held in commemoration of Saint Joseph in the city of Valencia. The term Falles refers to both the celebration and the monuments created during the celebration. A number of towns in the Valencian Community have similar celebrations inspired by the original one in Valencia. Each neighbourhood of the city has an organized group of people, the Casal faller, that works all year long holding fundraising parties and dinners, usually featuring the famous specialty paella. Each Casal faller produces a construction known as a falla which is eventually burnt. The five days and nights of Falles are a continuous party. There are a multitude of processions: historical processions, religious processions, and comedic processions. Crowds in the restaurants spill out into the streets. Explosions can be heard all day long and sporadically through the night. It's quite surprising to see everyone from small children to the elderly throwing fireworks and noisemakers in the streets, which are littered with pyrotechnical debris.

That afternoon after we met up with Lee and she had dropped her bag, we headed into the centre to soak up some of the atmosphere. It was also St Paddy's Day, and with England playing against Ireland that afternoon at Twickenham. So after sometime around the city center, it was off to the nearest Irish pub showing the game to watch that. Unfortunately England won that game 30 points to 9, so not the best result for Ireland, but hey, sure that got over that pretty quickly and into the St Paddy's Day swing of things fairly soon! Walking around town was crazy with the amount (and volume) of fireworks continuously going off everywhere! You'd swear the city was at war with someone, but no, just another Spanish festival. I was also completely taken back by the number of falles that we saw just walking around, but apparently there are more than 500 different falles scattered throughout Valencia, each with a crazy amount of thought and detail gone into them. That night we were just in and around town, with food at one of the local restaurants and a few drinks while admiring some of the falles, which were amazing, real pieces of art actually and bizarres to image them all then being burnt to nothing the next night. So had to make the most of the falles sightseeing before they were torched. At around midnight was the Els Castells which is the fireworks show, with each night of Las Fallas there being a bigger and larger fireworks show than the previous night.

Sunday we were up somewhat early and from the hotel you could hear the brass band around the city - La Desperta - the wake up call. Following behind the band are fallers, who throw large fireworks in the street as they go. Quite the wake up call. We had decided to head down to the beach that morning, even though the beach in Valencia isn't really all that great, but figured it'll be a good start to the day to get in on a bit of beach action. The wind had picked up ridiculously, so I decided to head to the marina and walk along there for a few photos, until none of us were able to handle the wind any longer and missioned back. That afternoon we headed to the city center to witness the La Mascleta, which are the daytime fireworks, basically no aerial fireworks this time, but just the most ridiculously loud set of explosions and sounds. No real reason, just because it's 2pm I guess, and that's what they do.

That night was our fairly massive night there of the weekend, which started off with a few beers, some dinner at one of the street restaurants, and of course some kalimotxo to go along with it all. There were more fireworks, more explosions, plenty of street parties, some Spanish bands and of course an amazing atmosphere to go with it all. What a night! Unfortunately, towards the end, I happened to have my camera lens stolen off the camera itself while in a crowd, which wasn't quite the best way to end the night. But at least it was just the standard kit lens, and not a specialised lens at all. Still, a brilliant night, just not so much towards the end.

Monday was a fairly rough start to the day, but decided on a fairly local breakfast then into town again for the last day of the festival before it all came burning down later. Since there isn't a lot which happens during the day, most of the action and events are all after dark, we decided to make our way over the City of Arts and Sciences which is an entertainment-based cultural and architectural complex in the city, and also the most important modern tourist destination in the city of Valencia. It is situated at the end of the former riverbed of the river Turia, which was drained and rerouted after a catastrophic flood in 1957 and now the old riverbed has been turned into a picturesque sunken park, which is quite some sight.

We spent some good time walking around the park and both admired and were puzzled by the buildings there which included the Imax and Planetarium resembling a giant eye, the science museum resembling the skeleton of a whale, the massive covered landscape walk home to thousands of plants, the open-air oceanographic park, the opera house and performing arts center, the impressive suspension bridge, the covered plaza for concerts and sporting events, as well as other random buildings, all bunched up together in this park area.

After a good walk around, we made our way back to the hotel to change and head out for dinner and the burning of the falles. At around 10pm they light fire to the smaller falles which are usually situated around the main falles, followed at around midnight by the much larger and more impressive one. To add to the fiery madness, the falles were ignited using a fuse scattered with fireworks, and inside each of them was hidden more gunpowder and fireworks!

We found one particular and impressive falles to watch burn, and it certainly didn't let us down. What I found interesting were all the fire fighters at each burning, who were there to hose down the surrounding buildings during the blaze to stop them from melting from the unbelievable heat which came off the burning falles. Quite incredible! After watching it mostly burn, we headed round the city to catch a glimpse of the other falles, all now on fire and burning (rather rapidly) towards the ground.

Once most of them were nothing but ash and burnt rubble, we decided to make our way back to the hotel and call it a night. The city center was fairly quiet that night, nothing compared to the night before, so rather glad we made most of Sunday night really. Yesterday morning was check out day, and the last day of my long weekend away. Si still had another day booked in Alicante, was once checked out we took the train down south to Alicante which would normally be a hot sunny seaside town, but instead was raining and miserable. Can't complain, at least the weather was perfect for Las Fallas. After getting in, we headed to the hostel, Si dropped his bag then we found a random coffee shop to chill in out of the rain and wind. Not quite the few hours of beach we had hoped for. From there and after some food and coffee, Si headed to the hostel and I missioned off to the airport and finally back into London, knackered after a fairly crazy few days of fire!